The comedy-folk duo of Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, otherwise known as Garfunkel and Oates, was brave enough to spend an afternoon at the mercy of ChinaShop. While Kate climbed on the floor and ate candy from a broken piñata, Riki feverishly attempted to blow bubbles with pieces of ghetto chewing gum before resorting to the dangerous sport of tossing hard candy into her mouth. Assembly lines collapsed and clown heads were sacrificed, but all was for the sake of an epic photo shoot.

Prior to sending the ladies into the factory and skipping down the road in vintage threads, Garfunkel and Oates sat down for an interview. The sidesplitting duo discussed their recent deal with HBO, shared secrets of performing for tough audiences, and explained how they can’t get through a writing session without bursting out into laughter.

What’s the story behind Garfunkel and Oates?

Riki: We were friends for a couple years and then right around the time of the writer’s strike, I wrote a short for us to star in and realized that we both did musical comedy. We decided to combine forces and write musical numbers for that short and we had so much fun writing together that we just kept going.

Kate: It was one of those things that it seemed serendipitous. We met, we wrote 2 ½ songs in two hours, and we have very different singing voices. I never thought of myself as a singer but somehow together it blends real well.

So you were just joking around at first?

Riki/Kate: Totally!

Kate: The songs that we wrote were for the short and that wasn’t really joking around.

Riki: We had no intention of forming a band; it was just for fun.

Kate: What really happened was that we filmed ourselves singing on the couch and then she [Riki] just threw them up on YouTube.

Riki: And I didn’t even tell her.

Kate: I was so embarrassed because I was making all these weird faces. Then months went by because Riki left town to do a movie, I left town to do a movie – six months went by. We both got into town and were like, ‘Whoa people have been watching our videos and there’s something to this.’

Riki: So we just decided to keep pursuing it.

Most people say you guys met in the lobby at Upright Citizens Brigade but is it true that you two originally met at band camp in 5th grade?

Riki: Yes but we didn’t realize it until years into our friendship, like ‘Oh my God we were there at the same time.’ It was a really small camp so we must have met.

Kate: And I do have this vague memory of this clicky group…

Riki: That was my group

Kate: And it’s like this hazy picture of her group.

How did you decide who got to be Garfunkel and who got to be Oates?

Riki: I’m Garfunkel because I’m blonde.

Kate: And I’m Oates because I’m short and have brown hair and if I’m not careful I have a mustache. I think that just happened. There was never a question ever about who got to be who.

What inspires your lyrics? Is it hard to get thru a songwriting session without cracking up?

Riki: If we do then the song’s not funny. If we get through a songwriting session without laughing then we’ll scrap the song.

Kate: We were just writing a song in the car outside and we were laughing so hard.

Riki: If we’re not laughing it’s a bad sign.

Kate: If we don’t think we’re funny then nobody else will.

Riki: Our lyrics are about whatever is going on in our lives. Right now we are writing a song about when you run into someone and they know who you are and you don’t know who they are. It’s awkward and they get mad at you so we’re writing about that.

Do you ever improv anything on stage?

Riki: Nope. We’re singing in unison so if one of us improvs a line we’d be covered up by the other person singing the right line, and also people in the audiences know the words and sing along.

Is it a lot harder to do what you guys do on stage versus being on a film set?

Kate: Oh I don’t know. I think it’s definitely the situation.

Riki: It’s just apples and oranges. Some gigs are harder than others. Some are just really fun and easy and the audience is cool and people are cool and some gigs are harder.

Have you ever had a really tough audience?

Riki: Yeah. When we first started and you’re in a comedy club and nobody knows who you are and two girls with instruments walk out, you have to win them over. Usually about a song in we would win over everybody that was possible to win over. There’s always people that don’t like musical comedy.

Kate: I think the show we did the other day, the malaria show, it took half a song at least before people got up for it.

Do you have any advice for upcoming comedians about how to deal with that situation when it’s a tough audience and people are just staring at you?

Riki: I think it’s different for us because we have a song to fall back on and we can fill the silence with music automatically. For comedians, it’s a lot harder because it’s a lot clearer when you’re bombing.

Kate: There’s safety in a song. You’re not gonna stop your song because it’s going badly.

Riki: I feel like every comedian has a couple of gems that really kill, those sort of one-liners. If they’re really going downhill they’ll bring out one of the one-liners and turn it around.

Kate: A lot of comedians are also good at crowd work too. We don’t really do that.

Riki: I only do crowd work if someone yells at us from the crowd.

Does that happen a lot?

Kate: Once in a while. We have a couple of guys that come to the shows that feel that they can just talk to us on stage.

Riki: It’s very strange.

Do you have any musical or comedic icons?

Riki: I love Flight of the Conchords. I love The Lonely Island Guys…Weird Al Yankovic

Kate: You know someone I’ve never spoke about but she had a bunch of funny songs is Gilda Radner. When I was in 9th grade, I was obsessed with her CD, her Broadway show.

Riki: Also for funny ladies, I like that one particular cast of SNL that was like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig on there. It was the four of them on there and it was just over. They were amazing.

Kate: It was a golden era.

What can people expect from a live Garfunkel and Oates show?

Riki: Just silliness and fun.

Kate: A lot of stories that usually go along with the music.

Riki: It’s a total escape. If you just get on board, you’ll have a blast.

Kate: And depending on where you see us, gifts.

Riki: If you see us at UCB, you get presents. You get a kazoo and candy and fun stuff.

Does the audience get to play along with the kazoo?

Kate: Oh yes. Mass kazooing.

Riki: And we like to have special guests. Sometimes our surprise guests are planned but we like bringing out other comedians.

On that note, I heard that you were recently joined on stage by David Arquette who was playing the nose flute?

Kate: That is true.

Riki: That was fun. That was at the Malaria No More Fundraiser at Club Nokia. He was supposed to be in it and then his sketch that he was supposed to do kind of fell through at the last minute so they’re like, ‘you guys coordinate something.’ About a half hour before the show we were like, ‘What do we do?’

Kate: So we sang to him and he gave us flowers and played the nose flute.

How did it feel to make the ‘Top 12 Funniest Female Comedians That You Should Know’ list by Comedians.com, and come in at #1?

Riki: Oh I didn’t know there was that. When did that happen?

I just saw it on your website.

Riki: It’s so bad. We don’t do our own website.

Kate: I mean, let me tell you, it feels great. We’ve been riding that high for all of 12 seconds.

Riki: Well, that’s really flattering!

How often do you guys write new material?

Kate: Well it’s been hard because we’ve been writing our HBO show so we were meeting to brainstorm and work on that so we haven’t been writing songs as much.

Riki: But now we turned in a draft to HBO so while they’re looking at it, we’re going to finally start songwriting again. It’s time. Before that, we were making our album, then we made a series of videos, and then we worked on the show. If you don’t focus on all your attention on something it just goes away. We perform at night, we also audition and do acting jobs and so we can’t disperse what we do, we have to focus on one thing.

You probably have a bunch of ideas you’ve accumulated though…

Riki: Yeah, which we’re focusing on right now. We’re doing another couch video next weekend so we’ll see what happens. It’s the dumbest song we’ve ever written by such a large margin that it’s gonna be divisive, half the people are going to hate it which I think is awesome.

What’s that one about?

Riki: It’s a parody of one of our own songs. It’s a bad parody of a song that we wrote.

What was the inspiration behind “Sex With Ducks?”

Riki: Pat Robertson went on The 700 Club and he had a quote, “If you legalize gay marriage it would lead to legalizing sex with ducks.”

Kate: So we ran with that.

Riki: I Googled dumb quotes about gay marriage and that was the first one that came up.

In “This Party Took a Turn for the Douche” you explore your rapping skills. Was this the first rap endeavor for the two of you?

Kate: That was the first rap; now we have two raps. We have that one and we have a rap about hand jobs. I don’t even know that we had a discussion on whether or not we thought we could rap; we just did it.

Riki: But I feel like I was a bit of a rap Nazi at first. Not that I knew how to rap but I was like on her.

Kate: Riki was like, ‘You have to be tougher. You have to sound tougher.’

Riki: We tried to record that song like three times.

Kate: In my mind I sounded so tough and then they would replay it and I was like, ‘Oh that’s what I sound like?’

You guys have some shows in Utah coming up. Does that require a degree of censorship?

Kate: don’t know how we’d even go about censoring our songs.

Riki: I don’t think we’re gonna censor ourselves. We’re just gonna do it and see what happens. If it’s a bad show, it will be funny and we’ll have a story to tell. If everybody walks out that would be hilarious.

Kate: We’ll be singing a song about gay marriage in Salt Lake and it will be interesting.

It will be an accomplishment though if you win the audience over with that!

Riki/Kate: Totally!

Do you guys ever offend anyone with your songs?

Kate: We have, sure. There’s always people that seem to be offended.

Riki: I feel like there’s always negative stuff. I feel like for the most part people are nice and cool and like it. I think the first time we had some negative comments, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ Now it doesn’t even register on me.

Kate: I was the same way. I couldn’t stop myself from looking at what people were writing and now I don’t even look much.

Riki: Negative comments don’t sit on me.

Can you tell us more about the HBO deal?

Riki: We signed the deal and basically we’re writing and we’re sending them drafts and getting notes and we’re in the development process. We’re waiting on pins and needles. We’re really excited to do it.

What’s been the craziest part of the career journey so far?

Riki: I think it’s been the people we’ve gotten to meet and perform with.

Kate: Yeah I think it’s the same thing. I mean there are times where we are backstage with people we so admire and love watching and yet we get to be there and perform with them.

Riki: Some of these people are like the funniest people in the world and we are backstage with them and we feel so in awe of them.

Kate: It’s an amazing community too, the alternative scene in LA. It’s just great fun people. And you get to sometimes, depending on the festival, hang out with these people over and over again in different cities and it’s great.

Who are some of the people that you guys are talking about that you’ve gotten to perform with?

Riki: Sarah Silverman, Tig Notaro, Reggie Watts, Patton Oswalt, Paul Thomkins, Nick Cross, Donald Globber, Chris Hardwick, Dave Kepler who is in our video. Just endless…everybody good.

Where do you guys hope to be with your career in 5 years down the road?

Kate: Five years from now seems like so far away. I don’t know what’s gonna happen in five years. This seems like such an immediate right now thing. Who knows what five years will bring.

Riki: I’d like to have gotten our show on the air and I’d like to be doing comedy movies.

Can you tell us anything about the premise of the HBO show?

Riki: It’s very autobiographical. It’s kind of our lives, our love lives, and our professional lives.

Kate: Two girls in the city trying to figure their lives out.

Any crazy fan stories yet?

Kate: We signed some lady’s boobs once. That was weird. That’s what comes to mind.

Be sure to catch Garfunkel and Oates at one of their upcoming performances. For a full calendar of events and to keep tabs on what the girls are doing, visit:

http://www.garfunkelandoates.com/
http://www.facebook.com/garfunkelandoates
@garfunkeloates

Words by Nicole Pajer. Photos by Dustin Downing.

Hair and make up by Ajay and Elizabeth Guiterrez from Classic Glamour Dolls and Kayla Bresee

Carrot Top  – lookin’ good my friend! Lookin’ real good!

Hottie Playmate Holly Madison – now in the cast of Peep Show

Romany Malco

Photos by Dustin Downing